


The Trust

by Mithen



Category: Batman Beyond
Genre: Canon Related, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-25
Updated: 2010-07-25
Packaged: 2017-10-10 19:23:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/103353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mithen/pseuds/Mithen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Superman has finally been freed from the alien influence that has been controlling his life for years, and he has some things he wants to say to Bruce.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Trust

**Author's Note:**

> **Continuity**: _Batman Beyond_, after the episode "The Call," which Terry and Bruce recap fairly fully in the story.

"Let's go over the tapes." Bruce tapped on his console and Terry watched as the screen filled with the image of Superman in his black suit, his temples touched with gray, his eyes glowing red in fury. Bruce replayed the fight, and Terry watched himself once again reach for the lethal Kryptonite, saw himself pause. The Kryptonite was knocked out of his hand and Superman stood over him, his voice distorted with rage: _"The one person I thought I could trust."_

Terry winced.

"I hope that wince is because you recognize how dangerous that pause was," Bruce said without turning, his hands steepled in front of him as he studied the screen. "You risk everyone's lives when you hesitate in battle. You must learn not to doubt your instincts."

"Well that, and...he said that same thing when he recruited me. He told me there was a traitor and asked for my help. 'I need someone I can trust,' he said."

"Hh," said Bruce.

The fight continued, Superman battering Warhawk, pummeling Barda. "He's...terrifying to fight," Terry said.

"I know."

"Not because of the powers. I mean, not just because of them. But because he's...Superman. And it's just..."

"I know," Bruce repeated.

On the screen, Superman turned and fled from the fight. _"He's gone to that Fortress of his. But no one knows where that is,"_ said a bruised Warhawk.

_"I don't know where the Fortress is. But I know someone who does,"_ Terry heard his own voice echo from the speakers, and suppressed another wince.

"You didn't betray him," said Bruce, his eyes still on the screen. "You made the right decision. You saved him."

"I still can't believe he was the traitor. That he was being controlled by that alien starfish thing that whole time," Terry said as Bruce went over the final fight up at the Fortress: Superman chasing down the jet with death in his eyes, Terry electrocuting the starfish into releasing him. "I don't know how long--Aquagirl said years, but--"

"Eight years, two months, and eighteen days," Bruce interrupted.

"What? How can you know that?"

"I'm a detective," Bruce said dryly.

"Um. Right."

The Superman on the screen was opening his eyes. _"What happened?"_

"You don't remember?"

"No."

Bruce froze the video. "He's lying."

"What?"

"He remembers."

"How do you know?" Terry bit his lip, but Bruce merely shook his head, very slightly.

"I can tell. I know him." He fell silent, and the silence stretched as he stared at the screen, at the worn and weary face filling it.

Terry shifted from foot to foot. "You two were...friends, before, right?"

"We haven't spoken since I retired," Bruce said.

_Twenty years of silence._ "He's...maybe you should talk to him. I mean, it's not too late to--"

"--It's too late," said Bruce, swiveling the chair abruptly; Terry got out of his way.

"Well, it wasn't too late twenty years ago," Terry said, "What, did you _like_ the whole 'grumpy old man' vibe you had going? Didn't want to ruin your record-winning streak of consecutive days moping or something? Because you could have just--"

"--I didn't want to see him." Bruce's brows were drawn together tightly, glaring, and Terry felt an answering bristle in himself.

"You didn't want to see him? Or you didn't want _him_ to see _you_?" Bruce's glare sharpened painfully and Terry felt he had scored a hit; he pressed on, unable to let it lie. "That's it, isn't it? You didn't want your friend to see you failing. You didn't want _Superman_ to see you getting old, getting frail." Bruce looked away. "You didn't want him to pity you."

There was a brief silence. Bruce gripped his cane more tightly and moved past Terry, his face bleak.

"But..." Terry groped for words, speaking to Bruce's tense back. "He's not like that, you should know that. I mean, he's _Superman_. It's not too late."

"It's too late," Bruce growled again. "Trust me."

Terry listened to him slowly make his way up the stairs, his cane clacking on each step.

Eventually he reached out and hit the button that let Superman's face dim into darkness.

**: : :**

The desktop computer in Bruce's Wayne's bedroom glowed softly, the only light in the dark room. The French doors to the veranda were open and a slight breeze stirred the inky curtains.

Bruce massaged his hands briefly, feeling the tendons aching, the fingers curling into claws despite himself. He opened a folder on the desktop titled "Unnamed Folder."

Inside the folder were four thousand five hundred and sixty seven audio files, neatly arranged by date: one per day.

After a moment's hesitation, he clicked on the last one.

_"Hello Bruce."_ The voice was warm, cheerful. _"Just wondering if you'd like to go out, get a cup of coffee somewhere. I saw there was a Lichtenstein exhibition in Gotham right now--we could go, you could tell me pop art was trash, I could tell you to lighten up and live a little._" There was a brief pause, the faintest impression of a sigh. _"Well, old friend, maybe some other time._" A longer pause. When it came again the voice was low and rough. _"Bruce. You have to pick up someday."_ He chuckled slightly. _"You know I'm never going to leave you alone."_

A click.

The message was dated eight years, two months, and nineteen days ago.

For a moment, Bruce buried his face in his hands.

When he was sure his expression was arranged back in into the harsh and unforgiving lines it was accustomed to, he braced his hands on the desk and stood, reaching out to grab his cane again. He limped to the veranda, looking out over his city, looking up in the sky.

And then he was there, descending from the midnight sky, his eyes blazing, fists taut at his sides. Bruce braced his legs against the marble tile as if in preparation for some attack, his damned traitorous unreliable heart racing.

Superman glared at him. "I trusted you," he said, and his voice was like a raw wound. "I gave you the Kryptonite, I _trusted_ you to use it against me, to stop me! And instead you _hid_ here, you let that _thing_ play me like a puppet, I--" He broke off and stammered for words as if his fury was tearing his voice to fragments. "I trusted you," he repeated, and it was forlorn, broken.

Anger, that most reliable and familiar of emotions, seemed to have abandoned Bruce entirely. He groped to retrieve it, a lifeline of ire carefully braided over the years. "I wasn't going to hunt you down and kill you just because you finally came to your senses," he growled.

_"You should have,"_ Superman blazed back at him. "You should have known I would _never_ give up on you."

He had known, Bruce wanted to say. He had known the minute Superman had come to him with Terry, holding out his hand with that empty smile. He had known something was wrong at that moment. But he clamped his jaw shut over rationalizations and excuses. They changed nothing. Not the past, and not the future.

"But instead you let me rot--you have _no idea_ what it was like, betrayed by my own body, unable to move, trapped and helpless--"

"--Don't be so sure," Bruce muttered, turning away. His cane grated on the stone.

Behind him, Superman fell silent. Some bird sang briefly into the night, oblivious to the wrongness of the hour.

When Superman spoke again, the anger was gone from his voice, replaced by weariness and a faint wistfulness. "I tricked it, Bruce. I couldn't control my own body, but it couldn't control my thoughts. So I thought about you. Nothing but you. How it should have Batman on its team. How its plan would never work unless it won over Batman as well. How Batman was essential to everything going well. It could trust Batman. I told it over and over, thinking it as hard as I could, only that, month after month, year after year. I knew--I knew if I could finally influence it to seek out Batman, the League could beat it, finally find the Fortress and defeat it."

Bruce nodded slowly. His chest felt tight and wavering; he wanted to put a hand to his heart but kept it at his side. "Terry's a good kid, he--"

"--Not Terry," Superman said. _"Batman._ There's only one Batman." His voice was very close behind Bruce now. "Batman," he whispered. "Look at me."

Bruce didn't turn. "Clark, I..." The sentence trailed off into the dark. His hand felt numb from gripping the cane.

"Clark," Superman repeated as if it were a word in an alien language. "No one has called me Clark in twenty years. Not since..." His sigh stirred Bruce's hair just above his temples. "Bruce," Clark said, his voice almost inaudible. "Batman. Look at me."

Bruce found himself turning into that voice as if he had not been stubbornly ignoring it for decades. Clark's eyes were bright, the anger gone--the damn fool couldn't even bring himself to destroy the starfish that had robbed him of eight years of his life, he was always too eager to forgive, too ready to love--Bruce's heart was skipping beats and it was anything but romantic, it _hurt_, and that pain sharpened his voice to a fine edge. "Don't do anything ridiculous, Clark. I might die of a heart attack right here and then you'd feel foolish, wouldn't you, if--"

His words were cut off as Clark leaned in and kissed him, gently at first, and then more demandingly. Ironically, Bruce's heart chose this moment to stabilize and fall into a steady rhythm, comforting and painless. The relief was so great that he couldn't help making a small sound against Clark's mouth, and Clark wrapped his arms around him and kissed him even more deeply, and Bruce sighed into the kiss and this time it had nothing at all to do with his heart, not with the ball of frayed muscle that had let him down so completely, not at all.

By the time Clark pulled away, Bruce had mastered himself a bit; he whacked his cane on the marble tile and set his teeth. "Clark, don't be asinine. Look at us. Can you imagine anything more ludicrous than two old men playing at romance? Face it: it's too late. We wasted our lives and it's too late for us. Go away."

The rage that had faded out of Clark's face was back. "Damn you, Bruce, why must you do this? Why must your pride get in the way of everything? Your damn, stubborn, total inability to _let people care about you_\--" His voice cracked briefly and he stopped, swallowed, "--when we're just going to do it anyway, you can't change that, Bruce. You can't change who I am." A weary smile, touched with affection. "I know what you're worried about, but I would never be so stupid as to pity you, Bruce. It was always your mind and your spirit, how bright they blaze. Even brighter now. I want--" He fell silent for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was quiet, thoughtful. "Why didn't you call in the military to destroy us when Terry told you we were all under the alien's control? I heard you tell him you would. You didn't."

"I trusted him," Bruce said roughly. "I told you, he's good." Superman was silent, as if waiting for something more. "I trusted you," Bruce added grudgingly.

Clark nodded slowly. The look on his face was a mix of satisfaction and hope, a mix that seemed to tear at Bruce's soul, ripping jagged tears in his composure. He set his jaw against it. "You trust me," Clark said. "If you can trust me about something as minor as the fate of the world, trust me on something as important as Bruce Wayne." The corner of his mouth crooked as he looked at Bruce, as if he were looking at something very precious. "You said old men being romantic was ludicrous. So I'm not going to waste your time telling you that I love you, or that I cannot bear the idea of wasting another day apart from you, or that I want to cherish every day we have left, I want to cherish _you_ for every single one of those days. I know that kind of romantic tripe doesn't work on you."

"Good," grumbled Bruce, although his throat felt tight and his eyes seemed to be acting up somehow.

"So instead," Clark continued, "I'm simply going to say that for the last eight years my actions have been dictated to me by someone else, and now that I'm free I do not intend to let anyone else tell me what to do again. And that includes you telling me to go away." His smile was blithe and bright and completely inexorable. "I do not wish to leave." He moved past Bruce, walking into his bedroom as if it was theirs now, as if he were where he had always been meant to be. "Please don't tell me to leave again," he said, much more quietly. And then he waited.

As if Clark entering the Manor proper had triggered it, Ace came bounding into the room, hackles up and teeth bared at Clark. He growled low in his throat, advancing on him.

Bruce stepped forward. "It's all right, Ace," he said. "That's Clark. Clark. He's a friend." Ace cocked his head and looked at Bruce quizzically, still half-snarling. "He'll be staying with us," Bruce said, and went down on one knee, more heavily than he had intended, to pet the sleek black head. "He'll be staying with us," he repeated. He looked at Clark, still standing in the doorway, watching him with a strange bright wonder in his eyes. "Right?" There was regret in his voice, and hope, and yearning, and he couldn't seem to remember the old trick of how to strip them out, not with Clark looking at him like that.

"I'll never leave you alone again," Clark said as Bruce straightened up painfully. And then he said once more: "Trust me."

And Bruce found, as Clark moved forward to hold him again, that he did.


End file.
